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Better Looking Linux: Tungsten Graphics
Several folks have e-mailed about the formation of Tungsten Graphics, which is composed of quite a number of ex-Precision Insighters. Linuxgames is carrying a bit of a conversation with Frank LaMonica, the CEO of the new company. They've got a contract with Red Hat already in place. Frank's statement summarizes what they are doing well: "The work we are doing involves Mesa ? and XFree86, including both 2D and 3D multi-screen technology, and we are working very closely with the OpenGL ? ARB to maintain the integrity of the OpenGL API. We believe that OpenGL 2.0 needs more industry support, so we are working to help generate that support. DRI ? technology is still in its infancy, and TG plans to help bring it to full fruition. Our first step in that goal is to significantly improve the existing open source DRI driver for the Radeon chipset. That driver is tentatively scheduled for release in late spring or early summer of 2002. "
That's a lot of question marks. You know, Everything 2 doesn't really appreciate getting Slashdotted. It's not like their advertising revenue is pouring in anyway, and you just make the site lag.
Its not that their website doesn't serve its purpose, but the Tungsten Graphics site doesn't quite instill any security in my mind of their graphics experience. Granted, hardware and DRI-related issues generally don't require good graphical design, but someone should at least offer them a logo.
Kein Mitleid für die Mehrheit.
If this means they can make me something similar to that [fake] multi-screen, 2D and 3D GUI in Swordfish, I will be the happiest person ever. Although I love blackbox, I would like something a little more "advanced"...
On the web page it's TG, but shouldn't it be WG?
When someone yells "Stop" or goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over.
We believe that OpenGL 2.0 needs more industry support
/. readers and karma whores like myself) all talk about how great Linux is, and for the most part, I agree. I would not replace my Slackware server for any version of Windows, ever. But I still run a Windows desktop, purely for gaming. That is really all I do on my home desktop, is play games. I would love to be able to play those same games on a *nix machine.
I would +love+ to see this happen, especially in the gaming area. I know we (the
Then maybe I wouldn't feel slightly guilty for pirating windows.. naaah.. I don't feel guilty.
I realize that this article was covering far more than just games.. but I know games are what we are all thinking when we hear the terms 'OpenGL' and '3D'.
visit my free wallpaper collection, wp.erasei.com
Thanks guys, we all know we can't rely on ATI for decent drivers - for anything. Heh.
MAN?!
Is this an advertisement for Tungsten Graphics? I mean, what is the story here? OK, so they are a consulting company who specialzes in graphics. Got it.
I Heart Sorting Networks
Wolfram is the german word for tungsten - After Wolfram research, tungsten graphics. Pretty unoriginal, there are so many other elements.
What about Plutonium graphics?
So, what I'd like to know is, is there a happy medium between userspace code in the X server and driver code in the kernel than can provide adequate performance without sacrificing stability? Right now, Linux 3D support is at either one end of the spectrum or the other: Stable yet slow DRI, or unstable yet blazingly fast kernel drivers. I would love to dump Windows for all my Unreal Tournament and Tribes 2 gaming needs, and am a loyal Loki customer, but I hate having to put up with either regular crashes or a large drop in performance. Hopefully, these Tungsten folk will find the best compromise.
"The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for 'entrepeneur'." -George W. Bush
It's a troll, but there's some truth. Why are there no BLACK Slashdot editors?
This is great news, finally OpenGL will gain some ground and Linux will get better graphics.
"At first they are hitting the Radeon driver" This means they rewrite drivers (hopefully with manufacturer support) and take advantage of some of the hardware acceleration and features we've been missing.
I don't know how many new games this will bring. But I am sure the KDE and Gnome people are salivating at the possibilities. Animated translucent menus, anybody?
If their web site is any indication of their graphical prowass, then be afraid....be very afraid.
I will bend your mind with my spoon
but without "compatibility" to standard of the beast, don't call it's name, "DirectX", we won't see much games ported.
Loki hadn't great business success and most major game companies will refrain from porting to linux as long this needs expensive porting. The profit margins aren't that big in the gaming industry. The linux desktop community is not big enough to justify larger investments.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Didn't we have to face this problem before with some of the video card (S3?) manufactures that refused to give out programming information... Code to control hardware should be open just like any of the other code.
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
Would be great!!!
I would really love to buy a radeon for my Linux workstation, but nVidia provides superior dirvers. I would like to philosophically take a stand and reject nVidia for their refusal to release specs but I need complete and efficient drivers. The radeon currently cannot compete with nVidia on linux (or windows) even though the radeon is likely better hardware.
i can give you many examples. here is one. also, this guy told me he used linux. and last but not least i use linux. any more proof needed?
... whatever they might be. You can't complain about a development team that includes the guy in charge of XFree86 *and* the developer of Mesa. This could definitely lead to some cool software :-)
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
An interesting idea. Any true 3D Desktop/Window Manager would of course be a hugely unnecessary memory and processing hog and most practical users would not be interested.
But still... if this research project will lead to more advanced and more closely integrated OpenGL, than a 3D windows manager may become practical on higher end machines. It may still just be a toy, but it would be a really pretty toy. Things like that, sad to say, are the sort of things that might start winning more of the home market over to linux(not to mention the advanced game support that is sure to come with independent openGL development and research).
BOB: Check out Quake version "n" running on my windows box!
FRED: yeah, that's pretty cool, but here's Quake version "n" running on my Linux box(faster i might add) and check out how COOL my desktop is.
lysergically yours
What's your box? I've had zilch stability problems on my machine running nvidia's GeForce 3 drivers (admittedly, it's a uniprocessor box), and before I switched to this card from a Voodoo 3 I found the performance difference between Linux and Windows reasonable even when noticable. (On the other hand, I'm fully aware of the Matrox performance not being all that hot... presuming that was the drivers rather than the card; when I had a G200 I didn't have any Windows install)
I've seen friends' boxen be unstable with nvidia's drivers, which causes me to suspect that it varies somewhat with the motherboard in use.
This raises two questions:
1. Is your motherboard one of those against which the GeForce drivers are unstable?
2. Is your video card one of those against which the DRI-backed performance isn't up to par?
I suppose it'd be possible to rig a system to count context switches drivers leaning more heavily on userspace code and with Nvidia's and see if the difference between kernel and userspace is the real hangup; my suspicion is that it's not.
Why did this even get onto slashdot? All this company has right now is a bunch of marketing fluff. For example:
As major contributors to three standard graphics initiatives (XFree86, Mesa/OpenGL, DRI), we are in a unique position to assure our clients that any development we participate in will integrate seamlessly with all major Linux distributions.
Unique position!?!?!?! Integrate seamlessly!?!?!?! OpenGL!?!?!?! XFree86!?!?!?! Holy crap, where do I sign? Reading though thier site I couldn't find any useful information, just a bunch of marketing material. Why do companies like this get onto slashdot when the only thing they have done is master the art of throwing around buzz-words (or did I answer my own question...)
I wonder what they mean by the "Radeon chipset"? Is this just for the "classic" Radeons, or for the new 7500/8500 series? While I've got a legacy Radeon, I really hope the support is for the new series - I'd love to see cutting edge cards like the Radeon 8500 get the support it deserves in Linux, and I'd pay for the privilege. (You listening, ATI? :)
The Free desktop that Just Works
What, was "Wolfram Graphics" taken?
Bowie J. Poag
With the Radeon 7500 (the one with the technical stuff to smash a geforce 3), nvidia will likely see a loss in it's sales to linux users. The Radeon 7500 is actually a radeon 64mb ddr that goes a lot faster. The radeon 8500 on the other hand is another generation, too bad it's not supported yet.
To be frank, if it weren't for the heat that nvidia cards produce, I'd probably get one. I just can't afford to have my server go down because a GPU overheated and pumped the case tempurature to 120 degrees. I don't want a video card that has a fan for something other than cosmetics.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Tungsten graphics is usually low resolution, about 0.25 DPI. It's also got high power consumption and therefore heat dissipation, around 25-90W/pixel. If you want colour, triple those numbers. You wouldn't want one of these displays on your workstation, believe me!
Still, it's often used due to it's scaleability; I've seen dozens of companies use them in the major cities, ever since I was a kid.
Slashdot is behind it's times, posting articles of old technologies, well-known in the advertising business!
For those more interested in the technology, each pixel is made out of a usually pear shaped glass bubble. A tungsten spool is inserted, and the air is removed from the bubble causing a vacuum. When electricity is sent through the spool it starts glowing brightly so that light is emitted. The absence of oxygen from the vacuum keeps the tungsten from oxidating, making it last much longer. By variating the current through the spool, you can increase or decrease the brightness of the pixel.
I still can't make up my mind...is this post a joke?? If not, here's my 2 cents:
Redhat offered that Microsoft should give all of it's "donated resources to the schools" in the form of hardware while Redhat would to provide all the software and support free for all of the schools involved? I'd say that's helping. A lot.
Linux is free to everyone, children included.
Samba: it's just a play on the SMB (Server Message Block) acronym. It's also a dance, which hardly constitutes as racism. I could be wrong on that, but I highly doubt that any racism was exerted when choosing the name, it was probably more to be cute and memorable.
And about Apache, it's one of the more widely used webservers around, so it's much more of a compliment rather than anything else. I'd love to have such a widely respected and well known piece of software named after me! It's also not a web browser, it's a webserver.
I applaud you bringing these facts to light, but I'm unsure that you are aware of many of the facts behind Linux, it's politics and users, and seem to be seeking it only as a scapegoat.
Does this mean that I might get my radeon 64ddr to work on my giga-byte motherboard(GA-7XDR)? Apparently the problem is with DRI support on the AMD 76x chipsets..
I wouldn't have bought this combo had I known about the problems, but I thought I had done my research!
Now I'm sad. I saw the title and was excited. I thought "Finally! An alternative to the MacOS X snazzy plastic buttons. Tungsten! Mmmm. I bet that looks really cooool". Then I read some more. Jabber jabber. Jibber jibber. Jibbery jabbery.
This turns out to be a real problem in the visual effects community -- a lot of our work depends on having good, fast 2D. Film frames, after all, are still just 2D images.
I hope that this new driver they speak of, and future drivers, recognize this. We'll see. At this point, we have to by nVidia boards, even while the drivers are closed-source, they provide pretty good 2D support.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Am I correct in my impression that Precision Insight included some of the more famous names from SGI and that some of these same people would be part of Tungsten Graphics?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
i just want someone to tell me why my agpgart halts my whole computer... i haven't been able to find a single person to give me any kind of answer.
The work we are doing involves Mesa? and XFree86, including both 2D and 3D multi-screen technology, and we are working very closely with the OpenGL? ARB to maintain the integrity of the OpenGL API. We believe that OpenGL 2.0 needs more industry support, so we are working to help generate that support. DRI? technology is still in its infancy, and TG plans to help bring it to full fruition. Our first step in that goal is to significantly improve the existing open source DRI driver for the Radeon chipset. That driver is tentatively scheduled for release in late spring or early summer of 2002.
I'm no moron. I own a handful of computers, Mac and Linux, I've built a few dozen machines in my time, and I managed to configure X on them when necessary. That said, what the hell does this mean?
Really. I'm asking.
-Waldo Jaquith
I'll agree that the website or the other linked material don't really go beyond the fluff, so let me try to explain why this matters. Frank and most of the other people involved in this have been going to the Linux shows and writing XFree86 drivers for Red Hat and stuff like that since at least, well, 1996 or so (probably longer). Then the Linux Hype Effect sucked them into VA Linux and spat them out the other side (hopefully it had its rewards, although I don't know how much stock they got or when/whether they sold it). Now they are going back to their roots - a small technically oriented company. I expect to see more of this - lots of good companies went through much upheaval in the days of the Linux Hype Effect and so now we should see things realigning in a more stable, sustainable configuration.
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but tungsten is a bad choice for a digital application, especially for high-speed data transmission which is necessary for high-end graphics. Also, it's a bad choice for displays.
Couple of reasons, tungsten doesn't have steep enough attack/decay slope (goes light and dark too slowly) limiting the maximum bandwidth, and it also is extremely energy inefficient, putting out a lot of heat for a little light.
(Score:-1, waaaaaaay Offtopic)
Everyone bitches about ATI's 'sucky' drivers but almost everyone that complains is using a Nvidia card. The current Radeon drivers are rock solid. Personally, I have not had any problems with my Radeon DDR since it was new.
Besides.....if Nvidias drivers are so good why does everyone use leaked beta drivers to solve problems?
I don't care how good the graphics libraries are, Linux apps will still be Butt-Ugly as long as developers (myself included - Kylix Yea!) continue writing Butt-Ugly apps.
Then again I've made some damn ugly Windows apps too.
Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
OpenGL is not just about games, though I play them along with everyone else :)
Mcad, Scientific Vis. , Simulation are some applications that depend on OpenGL right now. There is a *lot* of pressure to move some of these to the win32 graphics API to gain the economics of scale that surround the Intel platform.
In the MCAD area, OpenGL is widely used because the big players are still cross platform. Over the last few years, there has been little real Linux interest, and little UNIX interest. Almost every one starting new with MCAD was starting on win32.
This year has been different. People are asking about MCAD on Linux and UNIX. Seems that some of the backlash we all have postulated about here is beginning to happen. (about goddam time!)
One interesting approach has been to put in win32 MCAD because it is cheaper than UNIX, maybe use a UNIX backend and hope to migrate to Linux when things come together in the near future. Hearing this stuff is huge and indicates to me that Tungsten is in the right place at the right time.
Good quality X servers can at least take advantage of back-end UNIX compute servers. Enough people do this and realize the administrative and support advantages and Linux native ports will follow.
So here's to hoping for next year. OpenOffice will continue to get capable, Linux graphics will get strong and compare more favorably to highend implementations like IRIX, and some ancillary applications will appear to make technical computing on Linux a reality outside the developer and adademic communities.
Blogging because I can...
Beautiful BSD in a glowing blue box! Yes, Mac OSX in a modified case...
http://www.kentsalas.com/blueiceG4/p5.asp
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
Compare these 2 web pages:
Precision Insight Team
Tungsten Graphics Team
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Besides specialized uses like that, the linux gui can really use some help. It cant even do transparency properly, and you can forget about genie effects.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I know.
Why the fuck don't they make a bomb ass game just for Linux? And don't say fucking Tuxracer.
Oh great, my radeon will be obsolete by then! :) NVidia will have released SpaceHeater 4 GTS (Using the plasma state of mass to increase core temperature and power draw by another 120%. Gonna have to run a drive connector to the vidcard) Then ATI will have released something decent to try to compete, but won't have time to write the drivers for it either. Maybe the Radeon drivers will be good enough to make up the difference :)
Karma Clown
If you want very fast and quality 3d graphics support under linux, solaris x86, or freebsd you go with accelerated x. XiG has rewritten the whole thing for their new software and the performance is AWESOME. You can see a comparison between accelx and xfree dri on the xig website. The price isnt too bad, it is worth it to me at least.
I consider anything to do with desktop graphics a dead end. Even if handheld appliances are just a fad, this is the wrong time to put an investment into desktop graphics.
The NVIDIA stability problems are old news. Yes, for the first 6 months they were available, they had some stability issues. Just because they stated in their README that they were having stability issues on multiprocessor boxes 18 months ago does not mean the stability issues exist today.
I only use dual processor boxes. I have a dual processor box at home, and we've got 11 dual processor Linux boxes at work. All use NVIDIA hardware, and all of them are very, very stable. Our lab does flight simulators and scientific visualization, so the machines get heavy 3D use on a daily basis. I havn't had any NVIDIA Linux box lock up in about a year.
Most of the people I've talked to who are having stability problems with the NVIDIA cards under Linux have either a cheap motherboard or an inadequate power supply. No driver in the world can compensate for either of these.
"Good people drink good beer"
The 7500, impressive as it is in benchmarks is actually the same chip as the radeon "classic", only faster. The radeon 8500 on the other hand is completely different, and 2d doesn't even work with the old drivers.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Come on, people. Who cares. Linux was never meant to be a stellar gaming system. If only you could look past your blind hatred of Microsoft and realize that Linux is never going to be the gaming platform of choice. Too bad these guys are wasting their efforts for something that really isn't going to pay off. But hey, it's on /., so it must be important!!!
All of this changing of companies, without nary a profit in sight, is confusing to a layperson such as myself who is simply trying to create a roadmap for my IT department.
It's hard to recommend Linux when there is so much confusion in the sector. I think I'll be sticking to tried and true software, which I know I can depend to be there years into the future. Doesn't seem like Linux fits the bill at this point.
Now I can have all 20 or so x-terms in fully openGL rendered, light-sourced 3d :P
Personally, i think trying to design a 3d user-interface is pointless until we have some sort of 3d display device (I'm thinking holographic projector of some sort)
I do hope they get accelerated OpenGL more commonplace/easy to set up though - this is currently one of *the* major things holding back linux gaming...
smash
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Arleen LaMonica holds my cock in her hand and gives Moorhead then an entire State University. She is a licensed CPA (Cock Pussy Ass) demonstrator. Over the past fifteen years, her sexual experiences have inlcuded spanking on all major areas of here fine ass. Previous John's include Coopers and Lybrand, Blue cunt and Blue Balls, United Ass Entertainment, Life Partners Group, Vibrant Graphics, Precision Insight, and the Office of Attorney General for the State of Texas (Don't mess with Texas). Arleen's outside interests are as diverse as her work experience -- everything from gourmet cock, fine 69'ing, and classical music to playing with herself, bicycling her partner, and skiing naked. These days, most of her time goes to her pre-school age Pet monkey, Morgan, who is a ride to enjoy.
Special people have long socks, ride short buses, & invent witty sigs.
Straight from the GPL preamble:
...the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users....
All its users -> children included. What, exactly, are you reading??
Also, as many know, Free -> Freedom (source code available to you, you're able to change it, etc.), not free of charge (although it does often happen to be). Which was the type of freedom we're talking about here.
And if you thought I was referring to price, then in contrast to other alternative OSes, a grand portion of code for linux is free, so I still don't get how you think Linux cannot be free to children.
What I'm saying is that any school could download most distros (i.e. Redhat), and install it free of charge. What is it, exactly, that you don't understand about that?
I could care less about VA and that you flipped the bird on them.. whatever that means. Im just tired of seeing you making stupid comments.. thats all.
I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
The current DRI Radeon drivers are horrible in 3D too, and don't go anywhere near taking full advantage of the hardware. I know - we've tested it: Radeon 64 benchmarks. Note: I work for Xi Graphics, an evil, closed source, Xserver company. ;-)
-jon